The Others
by Venus Smurf
Summary: The senshi are (temporarily) dead, and Serena's hearing voices. What more can go wrong?
1. Silence

A.N.:  The senshi start out pretty dead in this fic, but I promise that they'll come back.  The cats also won't make much of an appearance at first, but they, too, will come into the story.  Also, Serena didn't meet Darien yet, at least not until the end of chapter one.  

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"The Others"

CHAPTER ONE

The silence was terrible, deafening.  

Her world seemed enveloped in this all-encompassing stillness.  A hush had fallen over the entire planet, had fallen over life itself.

Even the birds were silent.   

The entire world was quiet, waiting, as it was, for the return of its saviors, for the return of the ways things had once been.  The planet was waiting for the return of innocence, but that innocence would be slow in coming—if it ever did.

And the silence continued. 

Serena feared the silence more than anything else.  It was too pronounced, too still—too unnatural.  The world should not have been this quiet, not even after the planet's guardians had fallen.

Serena both hated and respected the silence.  She knew the quiet had only come as a monument to the sacrifice of her guardians, but she felt that it continued to set her apart from the rest of humanity.  The silence isolated her, kept her walled within her grief, and she feared it for that, feared it as she would not have done before her friends had been slaughtered for a cause she had not fully believed in herself.

The world had changed when the senshi died.  Their sacrifice had altered the very course of the stars, had taken some of the hope from the world.  Though their deaths had ensured the survival of everything that was good in this universe, the loss of the senshi had also stripped the world of the light that was so essential to joy, to love.  The earth was swathed in a darkness that could not lift until the senshi breathed again.

Serena understood the silence, though she was still unnerved by it.  The entire earth, she felt, knew of the losses she had endured—knew, and mourned with her.  The world shared in her pain, and this silence was the manifestation of its sorrow.  It grieved for the loss of her senshi as deeply as she.

She did not question this stillness.  She knew the magnitude of what this world had lost, just as she knew the universe would never completely recover.  This heartache was too great.  

Still, she wondered that the humans could not sense the darkness that had descended upon this world when its champions died, could not feel it as she did.  The mortals seemed not to notice, seemed not to consider the earth's pain.  They were blissfully unaware, and she almost envied them for that lack of concern.

 She shook her head at the world's folly.  How could they not know?  How had they escaped this sorrow?  She felt it at all times, would continue to feel it for the remainder of her life.  She would carry the burden of this loss for the rest of her days, would carry the guilt and responsibility for the actions that had resulted in this pain.  It was only fitting, after all, that she be punished for what she had done.

She could feel the pain of this world pressing down on her, but she accepted the burden willingly.  She was responsible for the planet's anguish, and she must bear the brunt of the grief.  This had become her responsibility the moment she had allowed the senshi to die.

Still, she had not expected the intensity of the pain currently burning into her soul.  She was to blame for everything that had happened, but she had not expected this.  She had not expected her heart to break again under the strain, had not expected her soul to die with her friends.  She had not been prepared for this anguish.

Grief rose in her, and a bitter taste filled her mouth.  She silently scolded herself for protesting, even so briefly, against this agony.  Was it not fitting that she feel the world's pain?  The destined saviors of this earth had died for her, because of her.  They had died to protect _her.  _She deserved this punishment for allowing the senshi to sacrifice themselves for her sake.

She could still hear their screams, still taste their blood in the air.  She could still see the horror and regret on their faces as they'd died, horribly, deliberately—knowing exactly what it was they were dying for but still believing in her in spite of that knowledge.  Always, they had believed in her.

She only wished that belief had not been so utterly betrayed.   

What was she without them?  They'd been her source of courage, her hope.  They'd been the ones to chase away her fears with comfort and sympathy.  They'd been the ones to defend what she could not.  

They'd been her saviors, along with the world's, and she had needed them.  

They had needed her, as well, but she had failed them, had allowed them to fall at the hands of an enemy that only lived because Serena herself had been weak.  Serena had become prey to her own doubts, and those doubts and misgivings had cost the lives of the four people she loved most in this world.

Serena slowly lifted her graceful, lovely head from the tear-stained pillows of her bed.  She stared out her bedroom window, not seeing the rain-darkened sky or the tall skyscrapers of her city.  Her pain had blinded her to this world.

She had changed with the death of her senshi.  The light of joy had faded from her face, from her eyes, leaving her as soulless as the friends she was to bury this day.  Her gaze, the same gaze that had once infused her companions with love and purpose, was now as vacant as the place they'd left in her heart.  

She was empty.

Serena sighed, her expression weighted by the tears she would no longer allow herself to shed.  She knew she could not give into her sorrow, into her pain or her guilt.  She could not allow herself to weaken further, not now.  To do so would make their deaths meaningless, and she would not stand for that.  

All for me, she thought, feeling an ache begin behind her eyes.  All of this for me, _because_ of me…  How can I go on, knowing this is my fault?  I lost them, all because I wasn't strong enough, because I wasn't _good_ enough.

She sighed again, letting her vacant gaze drift back to the world outside her window.  She felt hollow, numb.  Any other person would have been screaming with grief, weeping.  She could not.  She could only stare out the window, letting this ice inside take control.  

Her life had become a nightmare, a waking evil that must be faced every moment of every day.  She was losing the battle to this nightmare, losing the battle to her grief and her guilt.  She was strong, but she had never been strong enough for this.

A light knock sounded at her door, and she started abruptly.  Her heart skipped a beat with the sudden, irrational fear that rose in her, but she suppressed it as she woodenly slid across her bed and pushed herself to her feet.  

She moved slowly towards the door, feeling a lump of grief rising in her throat.  Swallowing with difficulty and pulling the door aside, she could not speak as she met the concerned, shuttered gaze of her mother.  

"It's time," her mother said, voice muted with her own pain.  

Serena nodded silently, though her face had fallen.  It was time, she thought with terrible sadness.  Time to bid a final farewell to the friends she'd lost, to the life she'd almost resurrected.  Time to let those friends enjoy the rest they'd earned so many times over.  Time to accept that she would be alone forever.

Time to let go.

Serena felt the tears rising to her eyes once more, and she angrily dashed them away with one hand.  She followed her mother down the stairs of their small house, moving with the hesitant numbness of one who has lost everything.  

Her father and small brother joined the two grieving women at the front door of their home.  Serena nodded in wordless gratitude as her father helped her into her coat, as her brother held the door aside for her.  

Even now, their eyes were filled with questions. 

Serena ignored them.  They had tried to comfort her, had tried to make her speak.  They had tried to help her, but she had kept her grief to herself.  She knew they would not understand, and she did not want to add to their pain.   

They could not understand.

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The rain started shortly after the funeral began.  Icy drops fell on a sea of black umbrellas, on an ocean of grieving faces.  Countless eyes filled with tears as a man in the black robe of a priest spoke softly of divine comfort and eternal purpose.  His voice was heavy with an intense sorrow and an even more intense hope.  

So, too, did the rain continue to fall on the four brown coffins in the center of that grieving circle, wilting the flowers arranged at the heads of those caskets.  The rain slid into the open graves, blurred the names carved into the marble tombstones.  It mingled with the tears streaming down so many faces.

Of the gathered mourners, only one girl did not weep.  She stood beside the priest, and her lovely face was both pale and haunted.  Her eyes were blank and almost emotionless, but the young man standing opposite her could see the horror lingering in her expression.  This girl, he knew, was grieving more deeply than any of them.

She made a beautiful, tragic picture, Darien Chiba mused silently, watching her.  She was truly lovely, with delicate features and large eyes that had become only more large and gem-like in contrast to her pale skin.  Her face seemed almost ethereal, her beauty otherworldly in its perfection.  She appeared to be more a grieving angel than a mortal being. 

She was young, and very slender, and the black dress she wore only emphasized this.  She seemed even more tiny beside the tall, black-robed priest, and her face was far too pale.  He could detect an intense weariness in her expression, a sadness that did not come even from the deaths of her friends.  

She did not carry an umbrella, but she seemed not to notice the rain plastering her long, golden hair to her face and body.  She simply stared at the four caskets before her, appearing not to hear the words of comfort the priest offered to everyone else.  This girl was beyond comfort.

Darien sighed as he finally ripped his gaze from the girl's pale, lovely face.  I should not be here, he thought.  He had not known any of these girls, did not know any of the men or women gathered here to mourn for them.  He had not known them in life, and so did not belong here.  He felt that he was intruding on their loved ones' grief.

His eyes drifted once more to the girl.  He seemed unable to tear his gaze from her for long, though the expression in her heavy-lidded gaze also tore something in his soul.  He had never seen this girl before, but he felt as if he recognized the numb grief in her eyes.  He, too, had felt the pain that could come only from the deaths of loved ones.

The words of the priest blended together in his ears, and Darien stopped listening.  He did not believe in the empty solace the man offered, and his attention was focused almost solely on the slender girl still staring with stricken eyes at the caskets.  

He lost track of time as he watched her, unaware of anything but her face.  She must have felt his eyes on her, however, because she suddenly lifted her gaze to his.  Their eyes locked, and his heart lurched.  The power of her eyes was such that he felt as though he had been kicked in the chest.  He could not look away.

He almost winced as she turned her face back to the caskets, not appearing to have been as affected by him as he was by her.  She did not look at him again, but he continued to watch her.  She seemed…familiar, though he couldn't place that familiarity.  He felt as though he would have recognized her in any crowd, would have noticed her wherever she was and whatever she was doing.  He felt as though he knew her.

Darien glanced at the priest's face as the sermon finally ceased.  There was an intense silence for a moment, and Darien looked to the girl once more.  She had withdrawn even more deeply into herself, had lost whatever awareness she might have had.  She was no longer in this world.

Darien knew that look.  He had seen it in his own reflection, in the faces of other men or women who had lost something so deeply loved as to be vital to their existence.  He knew this girl would not return to herself for many years, if she ever did.  Her pain ran too deeply.

The priest placed a light hand on the girl's shoulder, and she glanced mutely at him.  He smiled softly at her, enveloping her with his own compassion.  She stirred, and her eyes filled with such gentle sadness that Darien felt his heart breaking for her.  

The funeral was over.  The crowd began to drift away singly or in groups, leaving only a handful of individuals behind.  Within a few moments, only the priest, the girl, and the immediate families of the deceased remained.  Darien moved to a discreet distance, giving the mourners a final moment with their daughters.

The girl watched, face inscrutable, as each of the family members wordlessly embraced her.  She hugged them fiercely, and a small portion of her grief slipped into her eyes.  She was crying openly now, though her expression was as numb as ever.

Darien sighed, knowing that he had intruded on yet another private moment.  He didn't want to be here, didn't want to be a witness to their agony.  Had he not made a promise to both the girl's father and his own superiors, he would have left long ago.

Soon enough, only the girl and the priest remained beside the graves.  Darien stepped closer, catching the girl's eye once again.  Acknowledgment flared in her gaze, but she said nothing as her eyes shifted back towards the open graves.  She was, once again, lost to her grief.

Darien sighed, turning away and leaving the girl to the priest's care.  The holy man, Darien mused, might just succeed where all others had failed.  Darien himself could not help her, at least not until he had gained a greater understanding of her loss and the circumstances behind it.

Frowning, Darien made his way towards the line of cars parked outside the cemetery.  Most of the vehicles had already departed, of course, but a few people lingered, not wanting to leave.  They did not want to leave the four girls alone in this place of death and solitude.

Darien knew from experience that they would not find the comfort they sought by remaining.  Death did not allow for comfort or peace, and it did not allow for hope.  Those four young women, cut down before they'd really had a chance to live, would soon become nothing more than a painful ache in the hearts of their families and friends.  Eventually, their loved ones would have to accept their loss, and the girls would be almost forgotten.  

Life, almost in spite of itself, would continue.

Darien sighed again as he crossed the cemetery lawn, nodding with polite sympathy to those mourners still gathered by the roadside.  Though he could only imagine the extent of their loss and their pain, he still wished for the ability to ease their suffering.  There was, he felt, already enough pain in this world without a tragedy such as this. 

Darien's superior was waiting for him at the edge of the cemetery road, leaning against an appropriately black car.  His arms were crossed over his chest, and he was scowling terribly.  That scowl only deepened as Darien approached.  

"Well?" the man demanded gruffly, not wasting time or words with the pleasantries that had little place in a cemetery.  Darien looked away, shrugging in answer to the man's unspoken query.  

Darien struggled to find words that would accurately express his sudden conviction.  He had discovered nothing categorically useful, nothing that would make his time here worthwhile or appropriate, though he hesitated to abandon that girl altogether.  His mind sought the words necessary to convince this man to continue his own search.

"I don't know," Darien finally admitted.  "I didn't get much from her, though I can't believe she had anything to do with their deaths.  Whatever else she is, she's not a murderer."

Darien's superior sighed, nodding absently.  "I know," he agreed.  "From what I've already learned of her, she's not capable of killing, even by accident or in self-defense.  She certainly didn't slaughter her four best friends in cold blood."

Darien shook his head, wincing slightly as the movement sent several drops of frozen rain down his spine.  He knew, somehow, that Serena Tsukino had not murdered her friends.  Though she'd adamantly refused to speak with any sort of law enforcement officer, she did not have the look of a killer.  The grief in her eyes was far too real, her pain too pronounced.  She was not responsible for this slaughter.

Darien turned his eyes back towards the girl, slipping his hands into the pockets of his suit jacket as he, too, leaned against the car.  "She's not a killer," he repeated, unaware that his voice had attained a degree of steel.  

His superior merely shrugged, also allowing his eyes to drift to the slender girl still standing beside the graves, motionless.  The priest had stepped away, leaving the girl alone with the bodies of her friends.  He had given her a final chance to mourn and say good-bye.

The two men watched as she approached the caskets, placing a gentle hand on each of the coffins.  Then, stepping back, she murmured a few words of farewell.  Her voice was soft enough that her two observers could not hear.

Darien turned back to his superior as the girl walked away slowly, slipping into one of the cars on the other side of the cemetery.  That car pulled away, leaving the two men alone.  "What do we do now?" the young man asked, still hesitant to abandon this girl entirely.

His superior shrugged again, pushing his body away from his car and walking slowly around to the driver's side.  He slid the door aside, pausing to glance at his subordinate before entering the vehicle.  "We wait," he answered, grunting eloquently.  "She may not have killed them, but she knows more than she's letting on.  If we want to save her, we have to learn her secrets." 

He sighed, and his eyes narrowed slightly.  "I still think she's innocent," he said, "but the government is calling for blood.  These murders have terrified a lot of people, and that girl is our only hope of finding what we need to hunt down the true killers."  

He shook his head, disgusted with the suspicions being placed on the innocent Tsukino girl.  "The people want answers, and they're just as likely to turn on _her_ if she doesn't speak.  The girl's suffered enough—we need to clear her name before she's forced to endure more than she already has."

Darien nodded absently, knowing better than most just how violent the government—and the general public—could become.  The people wanted to regain their sense of safety, false though it may have been, and they would soon be more than willing to sacrifice this innocent girl in an attempt to do so.  If Darien did not interfere and save the girl from herself, she would be punished for that unknown killer's sins.  

He sighed, and his boss smiled faintly.  "Keep on her," the older man told him.  "Spend as much time with her as you must, get her to trust you.  We need to know what Serena knows."

Darien nodded again, watching mutely as his employer climbed into his car and drove slowly away.  The young man watched him go, sighing profoundly.  He turned and made his own way from the cemetery, glancing quickly at the sodden graves as he departed.

The rain continued to fall.


	2. Homecoming

A.N.:  Okay, here's the second chapter.  It's still pretty depressing, though I reiterate my earlier promise that there will be humor later on.  This story will have a happy ending if it kills me, and I maintain the statement that I never meant to include so much angst.  Stick with me, guys; it will pick up eventually.

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CHAPTER TWO

By the time she returned home from the funeral, Serena was shivering uncontrollably.  She had not been aware enough of her surroundings even to realize that rain had begun to fall during the service, at least not until after she had become soaked to the bone.  She had not noticed the cold or the rain; it had not seemed strange to her, after all, that her body should become as frozen as her soul.

Her sense of guilt had prevented her from taking refuge under the umbrellas of her family members, just as that sense of guilt refused to allow her to care for herself now.  She felt, wordlessly, that justice would only be served if she fell ill from her exposure to the elements.  Her friends, after all, had died far more horribly, and she had earned far worse.

Her mother, however, did not see her situation in the same light.  She ordered the girl to her room, instructing her daughter to change into dry clothing.  Serena sighed, though she hesitated only a moment before obeying.  She did not have the energy with which to fight.

Serena slipped into her room, retreating, once again, into the solitude of her small domain.  Her mother, she knew, would not interfere as long as her daughter remained within the relative safety of her bedroom.  Serena could finally have a measure of the seclusion she had craved so strongly throughout the burial service.

She climbed onto her bed, wrapping her arms around herself and curling her slender body into a tight ball.  She was still shivering, her teeth chattering almost painfully.  Her eyes were tightly clenched against tears, and her heart threatened to burst with the agony of her guilt and her grief.

She could hear her parents and small brother moving about the house, hear their footfalls and the muted sounds of their voices.  They whispered quietly to each other, clearly afraid she would hear their words.  She knew they spoke of both the day's events and the horrors that had led to this, and they did not wish her to hear.  They were trying to give her the peace she so desperately needed and would never find.  

They hadn't realized, yet, that she did not deserve such a peace.  

They had, at least, ceased to interrogate her further.  Her family had realized that she would not speak, would not reveal what knowledge she possessed, and they had finally stopped their attempts to persuade her to confess what she knew.  They did not wish to make Serena suffer any more than she already had, though she knew they still questioned her involvement in the deaths of her friends.  

She did not blame them for their unspoken fears.  They knew virtually nothing of the events that had led to the slaughter of her guardians, and she would have been as uncertain as they had she been in their place.    

Serena groaned softly.  She trusted her parents, but she could not give them the answers they sought.  They could not understand the horrors she had faced, the events that had so altered her very soul.  They could not understand, and any attempt to explain would only cause more suffering.  

Serena had little wish to extend their pain, and she had even less desire to be the source of their worry.  Still, she knew that she could not protect them from their fears when she had yet to conquer her own.

Her own struggle had only begun, and she did not possess the energy needed to shelter her mortal family.  They needed to find their own way, their own peace.  She could not provide the comfort they sought, and she could not give any more of herself than she already had.  They must fight their worries on their own.  

The pale girl sighed, not caring that the violent shaking of her slight form had finally eased.  She could not find any relief in the gentle warmth seeping into her slender body from the blankets beneath her, and she could not feel any lessening of her burdens. 

Those burdens continued to press on her, and she idly wondered if she would eventually be smothered by her pain.  She could feel little regret in the thought, could feel nothing more than a terrible dread and an even more terrible sorrow.  

Her own life had ceased to hold any value for her.  She knew she was living on stolen time, on life taken from her sacrificed guardians.  Though she would honor their unwanted gift by continuing to fight for this world, Serena was no longer afraid of meeting her own end during the endless struggle to come.

She was not afraid of death.  Had she not made a promise to her companions, Serena would have welcomed the afterlife.  No matter how painful her inevitable death would certainly be, life, in her eyes, was far more terrifying.  

Serena shuddered, knowing she had both nothing and far too much to live for.  She could not die, not yet, when so many depended on her ability to protect the planet and its inhabitants, but she also had little desire to continue in this world herself.  

Her guardians had been taken from her, and she no longer had anyone in whom she could depend or trust.  She was alone, and she knew her forced and reluctant solitude would never truly end.  Never again would Serena find one in whom she could confide as easily as she had her guardians, and never again would she be able to share the side of herself that had so wholly consumed her life.

She had survived the struggle that had taken her companions, but she would now be forced to spend the remainder of her life alone.  She knew this, just as she knew that she did not have any other choice.  She would not destroy any more lives than she already had, and she would not allow anyone else to become close to her and so come into danger.  From this point on, Serena might as well be incapable of honest friendship or love.  

Nor, she reflected sadly, would she have wanted anything else.  The deaths of her friends had helped her realize that any true affection on her part could only be a danger to those around her.  Her isolation was best for everyone concerned.

Serena had become cut off from her loved ones, and she knew and accepted this.  She knew that hers was a deeper purpose, that her sacrifices were necessary.  Still, her heart was heavy with sudden loneliness.

That loneliness bit deeply into her soul, darkened her eyes with self-loathing and fear.  Above all else, Serena hated to be alone.  She doubted her own courage far too greatly to trust fully herself in her task, and she feared the outcome should she fail.

Still, Serena already knew her own future, and an eternity of fighting had as little appeal as an eternity of loneliness.  She had never been meant for the warrior's life, and the knowledge that she would spend the remainder of her endless years drifting from one enemy to the next, from one battle to another, lay heavily upon her.  She had never wanted much from life, but she still dreaded this.

Serena swallowed painfully, knowing she had finally found ample reason to regret her inheritance.  Her mother's legacy, and her own, had never before been so unappealing.  The gifts passed to her from her mother's line had never been so great a burden, and Serena could not help questioning why she, the weakest of them all, had come to bear it.  She was not strong enough for this.

Why had she survived?  Any of the others would have been better suited for this struggle.  Serena herself was both physically and emotionally weak, and she could not hope to succeed even half as well as they.  

Her senshi had been warriors, but she was not.  Serena did not have Mina's ruthless dedication or Lita's sheer physical strength.  She was not as passionate for this fight as Raye, and she lacked Amy's overwhelming intelligence.  Serena had never been meant for this fight, and the world would suffer for her lack of skills. 

She was only herself, and she was limited by far too many things.  She had not, after all, been trained for this.  She had been meant to rule, not to fight.  Serena, like her mother, should have been the last defense, not the first and only.  The world deserved far better than an untrained warrior as its guardian.

She sighed again, still shivering.  The worst was still to come, and increasingly powerful enemies would only continue to challenge the safety of her adopted home.  The agony she had already endured had been nothing compared to what would be, and she knew this.  In spite of everything she had given, her struggle had only just begun.

She knew, too, that she would never be allowed to fight unhindered.  The world would continue to press her for answers, continue to ask for explanations to her behavior and her losses.  The people would never truly allow her friends to rest peacefully, and she would never be free of this guilt.

Serena slowly opened her eyes, once more chastising herself for her weakness.  Her friends had died to protect her, and she could not allow this loss to become meaningless in light of her continued self-pity.  She needed to be strong.

Though Serena wanted nothing more than to escape this pain, she knew she could never escape the responsibility for what had happened.  She could never resurrect her guardians, and she could never erase the horrors she had faced from her mind or her soul.  She was as maimed by this darkness as her guardians had been, and she could not escape the terrors branded into her mind. 

Serena cursed softly, and her fingers tightened into fists.  How had it come to this? she wondered.  Hadn't they given enough?  This life should have brought peace and justice, not blood and pain.  Her senshi should not have been forced to endure this.  

Footsteps sounded outside her door, and Serena was, once again, shaken from her reverie by the entrance of her mother.  Irene Tsukino gently pushed the bedroom door aside, not realizing that her pale daughter had quickly shut her eyes in an attempt to feign sleep.  The girl did not, after all, want even this deeply concerned woman to intrude upon her uncharacteristically dark thoughts.

Still ignorant of her daughter's pretense, Serena's mother slowly stepped across the room.  She moved quietly to the bed, watching her daughter's pale face for several long moments.  Irene was utterly silent, though Serena knew her mother's body was shaking almost as much as her own had been only a moment before.  

Serena was not greatly surprised to hear her mother's stifled sobs as the woman suddenly knelt by the girl's bed.  Serena, after all, had not been the only one devastated by this loss, though she was the only being who truly understood the significance of her guardians' deaths.  

Her mother, too, had been hurt, injured by Serena's complete unwillingness to confide in her.  Serena had barely spoken since the deaths of her friends, and Irene ached for the pain the girl was obviously feeling.  She wanted to take Serena's grief onto herself, wanted to spare her child, and her inability to do so upset her greatly.  

She could not understand that Serena's pain was necessary, that this loss had ensured the futures of both her children.  She could not understand the role that Serena's grief would play in the survival of this world.

Serena might not have been prepared for the struggle to come, but her strength had increased with the deaths of her guardians.  Their sacrifices had refined her, had unleashed the core of steel in her heart.  She could never be truly ready for her battles, but she was greater than she had been.

Still, the changes in her would not go unnoticed for long, and she would soon be forced to confront the world's perception of those alterations.  Her remaining loved ones would question Serena's new self, and she could never find an explanation that would satisfy them.  She had changed too greatly.

She was no longer the gentle, simple child the world had known.  She had lost her innocence and her trust to the shadows, and she had been altered in ways the world could not yet comprehend.  This fight had hardened her.

Her struggle had taken more than her friends, more than her future.  She had also lost her peace, her hope and her joy.  She had sacrificed her faith, and she was no longer the person she had once been.

She had been forced to face her destiny, and that destiny would not allow Serena to remain with her childish innocence and naïve dreams.  The protective world to which she had been born had been stripped away, and Serena had little choice but to face reality.  

Harsh as that reality had been, Serena had matured.  She no longer saw the world in simple tones of white and black, and she no longer felt quite so unprepared for the trials still to come.  She had grown, thought that growth had come at a terrible price.

Her mother was still beside her, stroking her golden hair with a gentle hand.  Serena automatically leaned into her mother's comforting touch, tears beginning to stream from beneath closed eyes.  

"Oh, Serena," her mother whispered, and her own voice was filled with unspoken agony.  "It'll be all right," she murmured.  "You'll see."  Her head tilted to one side, gentle eyes softening with compassion.  "I know you're hurting, but the pain won't last forever."

Serena stirred, though she still did not open her eyes.  She knew Irene truly believed her words, but Serena could not find any faith in them herself.  Her own experience with death was far greater than her sheltered mother's, and she was wise enough to realize that her pain would never truly fade.  

Her loss would never be far from her mind, her heart never free of her guilt.  Each morning would always bring only a renewal of her agony, though she might learn to function in spite of her pain.  

Serena's pale features twisted, and she turned to press her face into her pillow.  She did not want her mother to see her expression, though she knew she would not always be able to hide her emotions in this way.  

She sighed, forcing the tears to stop flowing and wishing she possessed Mina's ability to hide her thoughts.  The guilt she was feeling could not be pushed from her eyes for long, and she did not wish to arouse her mother's suspicions further.

"What happens now?" Serena whispered, attempting to distract her mortal mother.  The girl kept her face turned away, vainly striving to control her emotions until she could look Irene in the eye once more.

Irene bit her lip in response, not knowing how she might answer.  Finally, though, she sighed, shaking her head.  "I don't know," she admitted softly.  "We want to help you, Serena, but we don't know how."

She sighed again, still not moving from her place beside her daughter.  Then, after a moment's hesitation, quietly began, "Your father and I have been………discussing this, Serena, and we've agreed that you should speak with somebody about what happened."

Serena started at her mother's words, lifting her face to stare at her mother with undisguised hurt.  She shook her head violently, looking away again.  Why was her mother suddenly pushing this?  Serena had thought this discussion had been put aside.  "No," she said, voice hard.  "You know I can't do that, Mom."

Irene's eyes darkened, though the girl knew her mother was not angry with Serena herself.  "Can't?  Or won't?" Serena's mother asked tiredly.  "I know you're hurting, Serena," she repeated softly, "but you can't keep this to yourself any longer.  He'll only kill again."  

Serena closed her eyes, finally realizing that her mother, as with the rest of the world, would not rest until she felt peace again.  She winced, wishing she might have found a better explanation than the one she would be forced to give.  

She rolled onto her back, finally meeting her mother's worried gaze.  "Listen, Mom," she started, biting her lip much as her mother had a moment before.  "You don't have to worry.  The one who did this………"  She sighed again, shaking her head.  "You don't have to worry," she repeated weakly.

Her mother's eyes were penetrating, but Serena did not shrink from them as she might once have done.  As with so many things, Serena had ceased to be afraid of her mother's ire.  

Still, she did not want her mother to continue to worry.  Such concern would only lead to more questions, and Serena did not have the strength to continue this battle.  "It's your choice, Mom," she whispered tiredly.  "I'll speak with whomever you wish."  

************************************************************************

Darien Chiba slowly climbed the flights of stairs leading to his apartment, and he could not recall a time at which he had felt more weary.  His head ached, and his muscles were slow to obey his commands.  He wished for nothing more than a warm bed and the oblivion of sleep, but he knew sleep would not come this night, not as long as that girl's face remained burned into his mind.

He sighed, shaking his head at this sudden obsession that had come over him.  His need to protect the Tsukino girl from both herself and the world had consumed him, and he could think of nothing else.  Until she was safe, he knew sleep would not come easily.

He could not understand this need of his to save her from her pain.  She meant nothing to him, _should_ mean nothing to him.  She should not be anything more than a passing duty, but he had allowed her plight to become a driving force in his life.  

He had allowed her haunted, beautiful face to penetrate even the deepest recesses of his mind and soul, and he doubted his ability to ever force her from his thoughts.  That portion of his soul that belonged to a lost world of dreams and shadows would not allow her to leave.

He wondered at himself, at his own sanity.  Why should the plight of a fourteen-year-old girl capture his attention so completely?  Though he knew she was not a killer, she had still refused to aid the government in their search for her friends' murderers.  She had refused to speak, had refused to explain her own role in their deaths.  She had refused to save others from this fate.

A thousand times since the funeral, Darien had tried to write her off and condemn her for her reticence.  A thousand times he had tried to make sense of her actions, but always he had failed.  Why did she remain silent?  She knew the identities of her friends' killers, but she would not reveal that knowledge.  

Who was she protecting?  Not herself, of course.  The condemnation she had unresistingly faced already was proof enough that she had no desire to avoid the harsh suspicions of the general public.  She might have spoken the truth at any moment during the past few days and saved herself, but she had not.  Her continued reticence was, then, for someone else, for an unknown individual who had somehow avoided the public eye and public suspicion.

Darien sighed again as he approached his front door, sliding his key into the lock and slipping inside his apartment.  He walked slowly across his living room, oblivious to the sterile beauty of his home as he continued to ponder the possible identity of the one whom Serena Tsukino was protecting.  

When no obvious answer came to him, Darien groaned and entered his bedroom.  He threw himself, facedown, onto the bed, closing his eyes as his body began to slip into that highly desired oblivion.

The harsh ringing of his telephone dragged the young man's mind back to the waking world, and Darien cursed loudly.  Without lifting his head from his pillows, his left hand inched across the bed, not stopping until his tired fingers latched onto the despised object on his bedside table.  He lifted the receiver to his ear, still not raising his head.  "Hello?" he asked, groggily impatient.

"Chiba?  Is that you?"  Darien's eyes flared open and his head shot up as he recognized the harsh voice of his superior.  He grunted something unintelligible, quickly lifting his body from the bed.

"Turn on the T.V."  As always, Darien's superior sounded gruff and angry, and that anger helped clear the cobwebs of sleep from the handsome youth's brain.  Darien quickly located the remote, sliding to the edge of his bed as he immediately obeyed his superior's orders.  "What am I looking for?" he asked, and his voice was only slightly less impatient than it had been.  

His superior heard the impatience, but he merely grunted.  "Find the news," he snapped.  "See for yourself."

Darien sighed again as he obeyed that order, quickly flipping through the various channels as he attempted to locate one of the many media stations.  "What should I be seeing?" he asked again, finally settling on one of more prominent programs.   

He did not, however, need to repeat the question for a third time.  His ice blue eyes widened as video footage of the day's funeral filled the screen.  "_Gods_," Darien whispered, watching as an image of Serena's pale face was quickly followed by a week-old recording of her slain and mutilated companions.  

His superior grunted, listening to Darien's suddenly ragged breathing.  "You've got that right," he snapped.  "The media's finally dug up something on the Tsukino girl.  If we don't act quickly, they'll eat her alive."


	3. Waiting

CHAPTER THREE

Serena was still feeling numb when she awakened the next morning.  She uncurled her slight form, lifting her head from her tear-stained pillow.  Her body continued to ache from the ordeal she inevitably relived each night, and her eyes felt gritty with the grief she had yet to fully release.  Her head ached, and she felt as though she'd been hit by a succession of very large trucks.  In spite of all this, however, she was still surprised to find that she was just as exhausted as she had been the night before.  Her muscles seemed to have been leeched of all energy, and she needed to expend a great deal of effort simply to drag herself from her bed.

He was coming today, the shrink her parents had chosen for her.  She wasn't looking forward to the time she would have to spend with him, though she knew nothing about him and so could not, logically, find an explanation for the dread she was already feeling.  He was, after all, only one more person to lie to, and she was becoming fairly skilled with deceptions and half-answers.  She could do this.

She was still worried, though evasion had become an almost second nature to her since the discovery of her thrice-cursed destiny.  She hadn't yet found a decent explanation for her behavior either before or after the tragedy, and she feared the risks of revealing more than she wished of her identity to one trained to discover her secrets.  She knew there would be questions that she wouldn't be able to answer, and she hesitated to give a lie that might later cause more trouble than it prevented.  The police were still investigating the deaths, and she could not predict which statements might later be revealed as falsehoods.

No matter how much time she'd spent thinking and worrying, she hadn't found a reason for her presence within that warehouse.  The building had been on the other side of town, in a neighborhood not known for safety.  A group of fourteen-year-old schoolgirls should not have been there at all, let alone been there in the dead of night.  What could she tell the psychiatrist that wouldn't jeopardize her hated mission?  She had racked her brains for hours, but she could not find any reason that might explain the deaths of her friends.  Even if she had been able to excuse their presences within the warehouse, she could not justify the ends they'd met.  

She hoped the shrink wouldn't try to delve too deeply into her thoughts just yet.  Perhaps, if she were truly lucky, he'd try to gain her trust first, try to help her work through her guilt without forcing her to reveal her knowledge.  She might have a little time to construct a feasible story before the psychiatrist came to know her well enough to detect her lies.

Serena shook her head, hating the situation in which her secrets had placed her.  Why? she thought again.  This isn't what my mother would have wanted for us, for me.  She shouldn't have given her life for _this_.  

Serena slowly padded into her bathroom, sighing profoundly as she caught a brief glimpse of her own reflection in the mirror.  The nightmares that had interrupted her sleep the past few nights had taken a toll on her body, as well as her mind.  Her skin was sickly pale, her eyes dull and empty.  Her once glossy, vibrant hair had become dry and lifeless, and she looked as though on the very edge of collapse.  

Even to herself, she looked awful, and she sighed again, knowing this would only increase her troubles.  Her parents' concern would intensify if her body continued to fail on her, and this psychiatrist sent to torment her would take the lack of vitality in her face for guilt.  He, too, would begin to doubt her, and she was not yet recovered enough from her grief to judge how terrible the consequences of that doubt might be.  

Serena swallowed, attempting to ease the dull ache in her throat.  When this attempt failed, she simply leaned forward, letting the top of her head rest against the cool glass of her mirror.  She wished she knew of a way to ease the intense pressure in her heart, wished she could hear whatever her own mind had been trying to tell her since the day her friends had died.

**_You look terrible, Serena.  You're not getting enough sleep._******

Serena's head snapped up at the sudden voice echoing in her mind, though her only other reaction was a brief wince as the too-swift movement sent a wave of dizziness flowing through her.  "Gods," she muttered, face white and eyes wide.  "On top of everything else, I'm hearing things."

Her face crumpled with renewed grief, and she winced once more.  For a brief, nightmarish moment, she'd almost thought she'd heard Mina's lyrical voice dancing through her mind...

"Stop it, Serena," she scolded herself fiercely, voice tense with emotion.  "Mina's dead."  She turned her face away, staring instead at the bloodless fingers clenching the bathroom countertop.  "They all are."  She sighed, rubbing at her tired eyes.  You can't keep doing this, she told herself wearily.  You can't keep thinking that they're still here, that they're still with you.  They're gone, and you need to accept their deaths.  

"You don't have a choice," she whispered.

***********************************************************************

Darien's fierce eyes narrowed as he forced his way through the dozens of reporters cluttering what once must have been an immaculately clean yard.  He scowled as he listened, face emotionless and blank, to the commentary each reporter was feeding to the cameras.  None of it, he reflected sourly, was even remotely accurate.  Speculation had already replaced truth, and he could only hope the Tsukino family somehow remained ignorant of the lies being told of themselves and of their daughter.  

The Tsukino's small home had become the media's feeding grounds in the last twelve hours, and the tall youth felt yet another wave of pity for the girl and her family.  Whatever her involvement with these murders might be, they did not deserve this.  

Darien paused as he approached the front door, quickly flashing his I.D. cards to the group of law enforcement officers carefully standing guard over the Tsukino household.  They eyed him suspiciously, and Darien supposed he was not the first man to attempt to break past their watchful gazes.  He sighed, allowing the men ample time to examine the identification he had provided.  Camera lights flashed in his eyes as he waited, and he suspected that his face would soon be accompanying Serena's on the evening news.  Try as he might, not even his gruff, taciturn superior was truly capable of keeping this visit a secret.  The media, Darien thought dryly, would be ecstatic to learn that Serena Tsukino was seeing a psychologist—proof enough, they would think, of her guilt.

His scowl only deepened as the officers finished verifying his I.D.  They quickly ushered him through the front door as the reporters continued firing their barrage of questions, and Darien favored the cameras with one last, icy glare as he disappeared into the Tsukino's home.  

************************************************************************

Kenji Tsukino stared coldly at the latest intruder to his once peaceful dwelling, hating the necessity of this visit.  Serena, he thought savagely, did not need some upstart kid to counsel her.  She needed an older man, one with more experience and a less handsome face—a _much _less handsome face.  

Serena's father scowled, wondering why his friend had recommended this boy at all.  Surely, he mused for the tenth time, Takanaka could have found someone more qualified?  This youth was not more than a few years older than Serena herself.  What could he possibly know about counseling?  This boy, Kenji thought angrily, could not heal Serena.  How could one as young as this possibly understand what his daughter was suffering, what she was going through?  Death could not be much more than an abstract concept to one as young as this.  

Though, Kenji reluctantly admitted to himself, the boy had sounded competent enough during the single phone conversation they'd had before the funerals.  The upstart's tone, even then, had been brisk and professional, fully capable.  Had Kenji never become aware of the boy's age, even he would not have doubted one who came with as strong a recommendation as Gregg Takanaka had given Darien Chiba.  Still, even that recommendation could not control Kenji's hostility towards this young man and the need he represented.  Serena's mind was fragile enough already, and Kenji was not willing to entrust his daughter's mental health to one lacking any significant experience, regardless of how intelligent this pupil of Gregg's supposedly was.  

Alleged genius or not, Darien Chiba was _not_ the man for Serena.

The boy gazed coolly back, clearly not intimidated by Kenji's continuous glare.  "I don't mean to be rude, sir," he suddenly began, startling Serena's father with his mellifluously icy voice, "but I'd like to see your daughter now.  I believe she's had enough time to ready herself, and I have work to do."

Kenji's glare deepened, but he nodded quickly and gestured toward the stairs.  As much as he wished to keep the youth from his daughter, he knew, deep down, that Darien was Serena's greatest hope of recovery.  If she was to return to herself, this boy had to at least be allowed a chance to speak with her.

Kenji sighed, gesturing for the upstart to follow.  He pulled himself to his feet, truly feeling his age for first time in many years.  Not wanting to reveal his weakness before the youth, he kept all expression from his own features as he motioned again to Darien.  The boy nodded sharply in return, standing with a fluid grace that surprised the older man.  His tall, tightly muscled form towered over Kenji by at least a foot, and Serena's father was, once again, forced to restrain his emotions.

Where had this boy come from?  The smooth features and tall body were not Japanese, just as the cool expression in the blue eyes was not natural.  There was something odd about this upstart, Kenji mused silently, something that left him feeling decidedly unsettled.

Serena's father refrained from complaining aloud, however, as he led the boy through his small, spotless home and up the flight of stairs to his daughter's room; the youth had, with what seemed to be a customarily emotionless tone, suggested that this first meeting ought to take place in an area where Serena felt safe, comfortable.  Though Kenji had immediately seen the wisdom in this plan, his objections to the youth's unchaperoned presence in his daughter's bedroom continued to make him uneasy.

Kenji paused at Serena's door, sending another quick glare to the youth following him.  "I'll be watching you," he growled, and his expression was fierce enough that even Darien's eyes widened slightly with surprise.  Still, the younger man said nothing, merely allowing his sharp gaze to rove over the pictures hanging in perfect precision on the walls.  

Darien sighed, seeing that Serena's smiling face was featured in most of the photographs lining the hallway.  Her expressions in these photos held an innocent joy that had been almost entirely lacking in the pale girl at the cemetery, her eyes bright with laughter and bright with love.  Where, he reflected unhappily, had this cheerful girl disappeared to?  The despondent wraith from the funerals might as well have been an entirely different person as the one occupying these portraits, and Darien wondered yet again if he was truly up to a task of this magnitude.

What could he say to a girl who had lost everything, a girl who had watched her best friends being horribly murdered and then been forced to endure a public hatred and scrutiny not undergone by even the worst of criminals?  

Was Darien even capable of healing her, after that?

He sighed once more as Kenji again rapped lightly on the wooden frame, not waiting for an answer as he pushed the door aside.  Darien heard a slight movement within, and he nodded quickly to the girl's father before he entered Serena's domain.  He did not, after all, want to give this man an opportunity to rethink the situation, and he had never been one to hesitate, even before a task such as this.

Irene met them at the door to Serena's room, giving a tired smile to the young man accompanying her husband.  She didn't wait for a response, either, choosing instead to turn back to her still fuming husband standing belligerently in the doorway.  "She's as ready as she'll ever be," Serena's mother murmured in answer to the question Kenji had not voiced, and her tone was as weary as both her expression and the despairing eyes that met her husband's.

Darien nodded, though the words had not been meant for him.  He briefly eyed Serena's mother as the woman conferred under her breath with her husband, surprised to find so little physical resemblance between this woman and her blonde daughter.  Though the dark-haired Irene was certainly a beautiful woman, she was not as lovely as Serena.  Irene lacked the otherworldly grace and hauntingly perfect features of her paler daughter, her nose not as delicate and her mouth not as full.  Her limbs were not quite so slender, her eyes not quite so large.  More than a little attractive in spite—or because—of the laughter and age-lines around her eyes and mouth, she had not ever been the goddess her fourteen-year-old daughter already was.

Darien's eyes narrowed as he watched Mrs. Tsukino converse with her irate husband.  Her tone, even when roughened by tears and pain, was brisk and matter-of-fact, the exact opposite of what Darien already knew Serena's would be.  Irene, unlike Serena, was very much a part of this world, and Darien would never have thought the two could be related, especially since Serena—thankfully—also looked nothing like her father.  

Could Serena have been adopted?

Darien frowned at this, forcibly reminded of the questions that had been with him since the start of this.  Where had she come from, this strange girl with more grief and wisdom in her pale eyes than any one being should ever hold?  What secrets did she possess?

_Why did she not speak?_

Irene was watching him now, and, in spite of her own pain, her eyes were sharp and clear.  "Be careful with her," she was saying, and Darien turned his focus to her words and the cautions behind them.  "Serena's fragile, and we don't want to hurt her.  Go gently, Mr. Chiba."

The youth before her nodded quickly, but he doubted the veracity of Irene's words.  Serena, fragile?  While her youthful body might be as frail as these parents of hers believed, Darien had already realized that Serena possessed a core of steel.  How could she not be strong, after everything she had faced?  Though she had not yet revealed the truth behind her friends' deaths, he knew her pain was too deep not to have toughened her beyond anything Irene or Kenji might imagine.  

Whatever else she might be now or had been before, whatever else she might have wanted for herself, Serena Tsukino could never be fragile again.

Darien mentally shrugged as Irene began to leave, stepping politely around her and moving further into Serena's bedroom.  Kenji, still scowling, turned to accompany his tired wife from the room, silently obeying the warning in her eyes.  "Remember," he murmured softly as he left, keeping his voice low enough that his wife would not hear, "I'm watching you."

The door slid shut behind him, the latch fulfilling its purpose with an audible click, and Darien breathed a quick sigh that would have been relief in anyone else.  Though the tall youth was not one to be easily intimidated, this man's clear anger was more than a little unnerving, and Darien was not eager to remain in such close proximity to Serena's father.  He was also, however, not one to dwell on an unpleasant character for long, and he quickly dismissed Kenji.  Now, he thought, I can finally do my job.  

Still enjoying this temporary respite from the father's intense glare, the psychiatrist-in-training took a second step into Serena's bedroom.  Grateful as he was to be away from the man's stifling presence, the professional within him was now calling out a command for Darien to follow his duty, and he redirected his focus to what clues Serena's bedroom might afford.

Serena herself, of course, was nowhere in sight.  Darien cocked his head to one side, and his sharp ears caught the sound of water flowing behind what could only have been a bathroom door.  From the force of the water, Darien guessed that Serena was in the shower.  He sighed again, leaning against the nearest wall and trying to calculate how long he would have to wait until the girl with whom he'd so quickly become obsessed finally emerged.  He'd already been forced to wait for nearly half an hour, sitting in silence with the girl's father—how much longer could she possibly be?

Was this her way of avoiding the visit he knew she had not wanted?

Darien shrugged again, mentally filing the suspicion away for later use as he began to catalogue and assess Serena's things.  His gaze became curious as he looked around, attempting to learn something of Serena from the arrangement of her possessions.  The room was not, he mused, as spotless as the rest of the house.  To the contrary, this bedroom was easily one of the most untidy places he'd ever been in.  Rumpled piles of clothing were scattered haphazardly across the floor, shirts draped over even the girl's wicker desk and chair.  Stacks of torn manga were lined against the wall, booklets flowing out from beneath the small bed.  Laceless and worn shoes spilled from the closet, and dozens of overstuffed animals cluttered every other available surface.

_Everything_—including the carpet and walls—was pink.

_Bright_ pink…

_Mind-numbingly_ pink…

Pink enough to make him feel slightly nauseous, in fact…

Darien repressed a slight wince as he moved towards the wicker chair, trying to avoid staring too closely at all that pink and wondering at the child-like atmosphere of this room.  Serena, he thought, was certainly not a child.  The terrible wisdom that he'd seen in her eyes had proven as much, and Darien could not help questioning the infantile and overdone décor of her bedroom.  Was this her mother's doing, perhaps? 

Surely no sane person would ever choose to spend any significant amount of time in such a room?  This place would drive just about anyone nuts!

Of course, Darien thought wryly, maybe Serena truly _liked_ the bunny-shaped stencils covering her walls, and maybe she enjoyed having her bedroom look as though she lived inside a dollhouse.  Some people had odd—or simply _bad_—tastes, after all.

Still, he'd never seen so much lace in his life—and he hoped he never would again.  He wouldn't, he mused, be surprised if the room alone had driven Serena as mad as those reporters now believed her to be.

Darien sighed as he settled his large frame into the girl's much smaller chair, listening to the wicker creak under his greater weight.  He folded his hands across his lap, waiting patiently for the girl to leave the doubtful sanctity of her bathroom and trying not to become sick from the excessively bright pink of the walls.


	4. Shoutouts

A.N.:  Hey, I'm back!  Okay, so that's pretty obvious, isn't it?  

Just a few things I want to say (actual chapter is not on this section—go to the next one.  This is only for those of you who a.) have questions that needed answered, or b.)reviewed at least once before.  The rest of you can skip this whole thing.):  

1.) I'm still taking names for the mailing lists.  I know I've never actually sent chapter alerts before (as I claimed I would in the beginning), but I'm going to start doing it now.  I won't be updating as regularly as before (for any of my stories), so I'm going to force myself to start doing what I've been promising all along.  Of course, I can't promise that I'll remember which names go for which story! 

2.) In answer to a question I received too many times to count, Darien _doesn't_ know he's Tuxedo Mask!  He never got involved with the senshi before this, so don't expect him to start throwing roses or shouting out corny speeches (By all the gods, I hope he doesn't start doing that—it's the one aspect of him that's always driven me nuts.).  It just ain't gonna happen, folks.  In all probability, however, he might show up as the prince.  

3.) The cats will be making an appearance eventually.  That's all I'll say, because I don't want to give anything away.  

4.) I've also been looking for other good Mina-based (or senshi-based but with a whole lot of Mina) stories.  Short of scanning every single fic, it's just impossible to isolate any.  Help, please?

5.) I'm going to steal an idea of roswellwbfan's, and start sending individual thank-you's to all of my reviewers.  It's such a great way to show my gratitude for everybody who takes the time to read and review, though I apologize because, since I haven't done it before, this first set of shout-outs are going to last forever.  First of all, then:

**roswellbfan****: **You should get a medal, you really should.  You've been reading this thing since the beginning (yes, I realize the beginning was only three chapters ago.  Work with me, would you?), and you get a special thanks for your patience.  This story started out really depressing, and I think even I would have lost interest if it had stayed that way.  You were right, though.  I'm trying to lighten the mood a little bit, and the really depressing part is now over (I hope.).  I'm going to see if I can work in a little humor now, though I also can't guarantee that it's going to be all sunshine and daisies from this point on.  We'll see how it goes.  

**roswellbfan****: **Yes, I'm going to give a response to every single review.  It's only fair, after all, as this is what you do for me.  Again, thanks for the compliments.  I don't know if what I wrote was 'heartbreakingly beautiful', but I thank you for the sentiment.  Quite frankly, that one phrase was the reason I started working on the next chapter!  See how much your reviews mean to me?  I look for yours before anyone else's.  

**roswellbfan****:  **I'm glad that you liked my latest chapter.  It was a real pain to get out, maybe because I kept having to switch viewpoints.  Oh, well.  I think it came out reasonably well.  And, no, Darien wasn't a cop.  I can see why you'd think that, of course, but he isn't.  I just can't picture him in a uniform, can you?  It's just not…Darien.  (I don't think psychologists have to wear uniforms, do they?  Maybe they can just get away with the suit.)  I like the way you put that, though: 'He is simply a genius psychologist who is already obsessed with Serena'.  The phrasing of that just strikes me as funny (in a good way, of course).  

Besides, of COURSE he's obsessed with Serena!  He'd have to be, wouldn't he, to put up with her as she's acting right now?  She's all depressed and unSerena-y.  She will, of course, cheer up—she just has to wait for the voices to kick in.  

Man, this story is screwed up.

So, you liked the father, did you?  I'm glad.  I just pictured how my own dad would react and then Kenji's character became pretty easy to write.  My dad's as much of a protective psycho as Serena's…or maybe he's just a plain psycho… 

Actually, this next chapter probably won't have too much humor.  A little, maybe, but not too much.  It won't be as depressing as the last couple, but it's not really meant to be funny.  I'm going to be weaning this story more towards humor as we go, but I just couldn't make it for this one.  Sorry about that.

**Sassy_chan****:  **Sassy, you were my very first reviewer ever, and you get a special thank you just for that.  I agree with everything you say, especially the parts when you told me I was wonderful.  

**Sassy_chan****:  **Yes, Sass, I finally got the hang of those darned italics.  It was pretty easy, once someone explained it to me.  I only had to save the document as a web page, and everything worked out.  And I'm sorry the story was so sad.  It really is going to pick up—even I'm starting to get depressed.  Just give me a little time.  

**Alcandre****:  **I'm so sorry that I made you cry!  Okay, so I'm not, but I'll pretend I am!  Just kidding.  Thanks for the compliments.  They were just inspiring. 

**Deeply Impressed:  **A doozie, huh?  Did you hear that everybody…I wrote a doozie!  Okay, that sounded just a little bit off, but I'm grateful for the comments anyway.  

**Sailor V-babe: ** I'm so sorry that I've made people sad!  Granted, that's kinda what I was going for, but I'm still sorry!  And I don't mind at all that you're reviewing all of my stories in this one section—I'm just glad that you're reading!  Thanks for all of the compliments—your review really makes me want to keep working!  

It's also great to find other Mina fans.  There really aren't as many as you'd think—or, at least, there aren't many stories where she's the main character.  Have you tried reading K-chan's stuff?  Her 'Life's Lessons' focuses quite a bit on Mina, and her story is so fantastic that your heart is truly going to break when her fic ends.  (Life's Lessons is, incidentally, completed, so you won't have to wait to find out what'll happen next.)  Oh, and you've absolutely gotta try sapphiregirl's "For Love or Duty".  It's completely amazing.  You'll love their fics, I promise!

**Marni****:  **Hey, thanks for taking the time to review!  I'm glad you liked the story.  You were right, though.  Tux doesn't exist—or at least he doesn't know that he does (did that sentence give you a headache, too?).  Darien never got involved in the senshi in my fic, so he never needed to raise T.M.  I haven't decided, yet, if I should bring him in at all.  I never liked Darien in that form (blame it on the corny speeches and the fact that the suit the animators chose just makes him look bad), and I think I'm probably going to just leave him as Prince Endymion, if I do any of that at all.

Hey, you tell me—what form do you think he should have?  If you really want T.M., then I'll do my darndest to incorporate him some way.  

As for Luna and Artemis…actually, I can't answer that portion of your comments.  They WILL show up eventually, but I can't explain why they haven't yet without also giving away too much.  I will say, though, that they're not going to be coming for several chapters.  I don't have anything against them, but as of now they aren't going to have too big a part in this fic.  Maybe that'll change, though.  I'm still working the kinks out of this story, so who knows what'll happen?

**bunny**** angel:   **You're intrigued, huh?  Can't get many compliments better than that!  I'm glad you liked the fic, and I hope you stay with me, because I think I'll be working on this story a lot more now.  It's starting to interest me, too.

**RaLeCo****:  **Well, yeah, this is just a start.  You can't get too much in the first chapter or so, but now it should pick up.  Darien and Serena are finally getting together, and the whole story behind Serena's depression will also be revealed soon (besides the obvious 'they're dead' reason, of course).  Plus, there's gonna be the voices in Serena's head and everything, and we can't miss that, can we?

**koosei****:  **You know, you'd be amazed at how easy it was to make Serena all sad and depressed.  We all know that's not her natural state, though, and she will start cheering up.  I promise you that, at any rate.  As for the media…well, I'm not making any promises about them!  She may find a way to fight them off early on, but don't count on it!  They'll leave her alone by the end of the fic, though.  

**Usako4life:  **That's a truly fascinating name, do you know that?  I really like it. 

Anyway, I'm glad you liked what I wrote—and I'm also glad you think I'm not getting enough reviews!  Please, tell everybody about this story, because more reviews will also encourage more chapters.  As for the dead voices, you'll be hearing plenty of those soon enough.  That first one was just an intro, but we're going to be having entire conversations in Serena's head, poor girl.  And, yes, this will definitely have a happy ending.  I hate stories that end up sad, and I refuse to write them.  This may be a sad story to the very end (Though I'm going to try not to let it), but the ending itself will be happy.  The senshi, too, will be coming back to life, guaranteed.  That's what the 'temporarily' part in the summary is for, after all!  I could never let them stay dead—I'd get lynched!

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Okay, sorry again.  The shout-outs took up too much space, so I just made the actual chapter a separate installment.  Thanks!


	5. Stranger

A.N.:  Okay, here's the next chapter.  For those of you who reviewed at least once before, please skedaddle over to the last section.  There's individual thank-you's for everybody—and, for those of you who didn't review before, there's a little bit of general info about the fic at the top that you might want to read.  

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CHAPTER FOUR

Serena sighed as she finished dressing, body still not entirely dry after her much-needed shower.  She still ached from the tossing and turning of the previous night, and not even the warmth of the water had been able to ease the knots in her muscles.  She wondered, tiredly, if even _this_ pain could ever disappear.  She could not suppress the rather morbid thought that her constant physical agony was actually a rather fitting punishment for the sins she'd committed against herself and her guardians, and she still believed this was more than deserved.

Scowling, she pulled the bathroom door aside, wincing as the colder air outside sent a chill down her spine.  She shivered, rubbing her arms for warmth as she moved quickly into her bedroom.  She had taken only a few meager steps before she noticed the presence of another human being in her room, and she halted, mentally berating herself for her poor memory.  Had she been so wrapped in her grief that she had not even heard this other enter her bedroom?

She glanced up, eyes wide but not fearful.  She had forgotten the time set for her interview with the psychiatrist, and she had not truly prepared herself for this.  Still, she was no longer as susceptible to shocks or surprises as she had once been, and she was not visibly shaken at finding someone other than her mother waiting for her.  She was, in fact, almost curious to see her interrogator.  What was he like, the man her parents had chosen?  Would he truly be as clever as she'd overheard her father saying he was?

She lifted her eyes to the man's, taking in every aspect of his face and his features.  She recognized him instantly, of course, as the one she'd seen at the funerals of her guardians, but she was still a little startled by his appearance.  Surely, she thought with a burst of surprise, this wasn't the man her parents had chosen as her counselor?  Had there been some mistake?  

He was watching her, eyes and expression calm and completely unreadable.  The dark-haired youth was crammed rather uncomfortably into the wicker chair her mother had insisted she keep, and Serena felt another mild tinge of surprise that he was not the old man she'd been expecting.  This man, she thought, can't be even ten years older than I.  How, then, has _he_ become my therapist?

No, this had not been the one she'd expected.  She'd anticipated an older man, one who might listen to her lies with the cool experience of his profession.  This boy, whoever he was, could not have been much past his college years, and he would be far less willing to go along with her deceptions than another.  Her apprehension rose in her swiftly enough that her heart skipped a beat, and she knew she could not fool the hard intelligence in his gaze.

How much truth would he see?

Meeting his gaze, she suddenly lost all doubt that this was the man her father's friend had sent.  There was too much knowledge within those cool blue eyes, and, as during the funeral, they tore directly through her soul in one quick glance.  She knew he was analyzing everything about her, and she wished she could also know what he had seen in her face. 

Could she deceive one such as this?  If he was as intelligent as she suspected, how would she ever convince him of the falsehoods she must utter?  

She stared at him, assessing him much as he was assessing her.  He was certainly handsome, she mused, with thick, black hair and a flawless skin usually seen only in magazines.  His eyes were the brightest blue she had ever encountered, and his features were everything she'd ever believed she could want in a man.

Lita, she thought absently, would have loved this one.

He was tall, as well, and tightly muscled.  His body was as perfect as his face, graceful and lithe even through the immaculate suite he wore.  More than a little petite, herself, Serena guessed that the top of her head would not even touch his collarbone.  

Mina, too, would have drooled over this man, Serena thought, a pang of grief echoing once more through her heart.  Her blonde friend had always adored tall men, and this one would have been almost everything Mina had wanted for herself.

Serena's eyes subtly drifted over the man's body.  She knew, without thinking, that he would be strong.  His arms were folded over his broad chest, but she could see the easy strength in his fingers.  She knew, as well, that he would be the type of man strong enough to be gentle and kind, the type of man strong enough to withstand as much as he needed to.

She blinked suddenly, and the confusion still within her mind only increased a thousand fold as she realized she'd been staring at the man's slender, agile hands for much longer than was polite.  She shook herself, inwardly grimacing as she tried to bring her mind away from the youth's intensely handsome face and back to her true concerns.  What was wrong with her?  She told herself that she could not know anything of this man, not when she had only glimpsed him twice and had never actually spoken with him.  How could she know, then, if he would be gentle or strong, cruel or kind?  She couldn't even remember his name!  

Her unhappiness over that lack of remembrance must have reached even that other within herself, for her mind, almost in answer to the rebellious, petulant thought, quickly supplied the answer even she had not known she'd been searching for.  _Endymion_, that other in her mind whispered.  _He is Endymion…_

The word echoed through her very soul for a brief, intense eternity, but Serena was unable to hold on to it, was unable to maintain the bit of memory that had suddenly danced in her thoughts.  She sighed, realizing, not for the first time, just how futile her attempts to recall more details of her past life truly were.  In spite of this realization, however, her heart shook within her, and Serena wondered if she had known this man _then_, in that other life she could barely recall.  He certainly seemed familiar, and she found herself almost predicting what his first words to her would be.  She could even imagine his voice, could imagine every nuance and inflection of his tone.  

Who was he?  Even at the funeral, even through that impossible haze of grief, a part of herself had reacted to him.  She was not yet experienced enough with her dual identity to know why that reaction had been so strong, and she had not allowed herself to dwell long on that flash of emotion and that even stronger flash of recognition.  For her own peace of mind, she had not had any other choice but to force the image of his pale, rain-drenched face from her thoughts.  Still, now that he was before her once again, her soul would not let the question go.  She met his icy gaze, and her soft, almost haunted whisper went all but unheard by the man clearly straining to catch her words.  

_"I know you…"_

Serena's mind was whirling with confusion, and a too-long forgotten warmth flooded through her.  Had she, in that long-past fairy world that had been her home, known this man?  She sensed that she had, though she also believed she could not have forgotten a face like his.  Where, though, had she met him?  She continued to stare at him, unaware that her blue eyes now held a question the youth could not truly read.  Her features were clouded with confusion, her nose wrinkled a little with her doubt.  Her expression, however, was wistful enough that had even the most determined accuser would have forgiven her in that moment. 

Who was he?  A remnant of her past, maybe?  One who, like her, had been forced to relive the life they'd squandered once before?  Did he know that he didn't belong on this world any more than she?  Was that other life, as it often was with her, nothing more than a dream forgotten before he awakened each morning?

Did it even matter? she wondered suddenly, mentally shaking her head.  Her best friends were dead, brutally slaughtered and already buried.  The life she faced would have little of joy or of love ever again—what did she care if one man didn't remember a world best forgotten?

But I do care, she thought tiredly.  Even if this man never learns who he is—and it might be better for both of us if he doesn't—he's still a part of my past.  Now that the senshi are gone, he may be the only connection with my old life that I have left, and I need to focus on that life to keep myself from forgetting why I'm doing this, to keep myself from forgetting why they died… 

_I need him…_    

The fear would not abate, and Serena's heart was beating far too quickly.  She continued to stare at this strange man, and her mind would not stop seeking answers.  Who are you? she wondered.  What are you?  How is it that your voice alone can affect me this way?  Images were flashing through her mind, even now, sparks of memory there and gone before she could latch onto them.  She tried to grasp them, but this compulsion on her mind was still too strong, and she could retain nothing more than glints of her past so brief that she could make nothing of them…

_A warm hand clasping hers, the fingers laced with her own in what could only have been a lover's embrace…_

_Herself, running, the hand so recently entwined with another's now stretched towards the smoke-stained sky in a silent, hopeless plea…_

Her hand again, reaching, always reaching, unable to touch the fingers desperately seeking her own… 

_A light so intense as to be blinding, blocking out all but her own screams of sorrow and pain…_

Serena fought against the stream of visions and the hopelessness now bending her mind, ruthlessly ending these half-remembered horrors before she betrayed herself to the hard-eyed man still watching her.  That other rose now in her soul, giving her the strength and the calm to pull herself together, to push these terrible part-memories from her thoughts.  Then, forcing herself to turn back to the shrink, Serena's perfect features settled into a mask as unreadable as stone.

Once upon a time, Serena had thought she'd remembered as much of her past as she would ever be permitted, but now, hearing this man's words and watching his hard, remote face, knowing that he was something to her but unable to discover the connection between them, she realized that so much of herself still remained hidden, still remained locked into her mind and beyond her reach.  Was this man, then, the key to regaining everything she had once been?  Would he be capable of releasing a past she did not even know if she wanted?  

The man's eyes were intense, and Serena would not allow herself to wonder if his hand had been the one holding hers in those vision-memories.  She gazed almost sadly at him, and she did not realize that her body was still shaking from that first moment between awareness and recognition.  Whatever this man was to her, she decided, she would do all she could to keep him by her side.  He might be her only chance for bringing back even a little of her old life, and she had to trust him long enough for her newly awakened mind to dredge up more memories.  Besides, she had promised the senshi that she would not close herself off to humanity—or whatever her equivalent was—and this was as good an opportunity as any.  

Still, she did not want him in her life.  She did not want to depend on another, to worry about his safety or the threat her nature posed to him.  She did not want to spend time with one who would always need more from her than she was willing to give, and she certainly did not want to come to care for him in any way.  If she did, she was afraid she would start to _feel _again, would start to experience something other than this pain and the merciful emptiness that came with it, and then she truly would break.

A new terror rose in her as she turned to look him in the eyes once more, and she realized that this man would be far more dangerous to her than Beryl had ever been.  Would her dependency on him finish the job Beryl had started, not sparing enough of her to finish this impossible task?  Would her past with him, if there even _was_ such a past, damage her more assuredly than the death of her guardians? __

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The girl's eyes were wide with shock, wide with an apprehension that seemed far greater than this situation warranted.  Her face was white, her hands involuntarily clenching into fists.  She seemed truly shaken, and Darien could not understand the almost terrified expression in her eyes.  She was clearly unsettled by him, and the tall youth found himself questioning her strange behavior yet again.  Why did she seem so afraid of him?  Though his reception of her had been a trifle cooler than he'd wanted, nothing in his expression or stance should have caused fear.  

He certainly had not wanted to frighten her.  His job—and his own peace of mind—depended on his ability to draw the girl from her emotional shell.  He needed to share in her knowledge, in her secrets, and he could not do that if she feared him.  If he did not get her to trust him and confess, how was he to save her?

He could not understand the sudden terror that had arisen in her eyes, a terror that had not come until _after _she'd been given plenty of time to watch him and analyze his appearance.  She hadn't been frightened when she'd first entered her bedroom and seen the strange man waiting for her, so why should her reaction have changed after only a few seconds? 

What had caused this?  Even if, Darien decided, she _had_ recognized him from the funeral, she should not have reacted this way—or did she truly believe he had come only to gain answers from her?  Was she afraid, not of him, but of the questions he might ask?

What did that say of her innocence? 

Her lips were still moving, and Darien reluctantly forced himself to catch her words.  "I know you," she repeated softly, and she was clearly speaking more to herself than to him.  "How do I know you?"  From the tone of her voice, Darien wondered if she even remembered that he was still in the room with her.  Nonetheless, her words and her voice stirred something in him, something that even he had not known existed.  That something inside him shifted and awakened, and he was left unknowingly and subtly changed.  The change ripped through him, wreaking havoc with carefully guarded emotion and even more carefully guarded thought.  Darien's heart beat painfully in his chest, and, once again, he felt as though a deeper, lost part of himself was crying out in helpless anguish.  They were both trembling slightly, but Darien forced himself to remain where he was, crouched in a chair much too small for his large body.  He would not give in to the instincts telling him to rush to his feet, telling him to storm across the room and seize her in a grip fierce enough to hold her until she answered the questions he didn't even know he wanted to ask.

Who was she?  _What _was she?  How had this girl, with her pale face and too-large eyes, caused such havoc in his once-ordered mind and soul?  How had she done this to him?

No matter how strong this need to question her might be, however, Darien's training was far stronger.  The professional within him swiftly pushed his emotions aside, forcing them under a blanket of remoteness, a blanket that cooled the heat of his own questions and his own doubts.  He became, once again, only the one sent to learn what truths Serena Tsukino had to offer.  He stood then, pushing himself to his feet, moving in that same fluid grace that often astounded greater men than Serena's father.  He tugged briskly on his suit jacket, straightening invisible wrinkles as he continued to train his wintry blue eyes on the slight girl before him.  He briefly considered her words, and his eyes were once again unreadable.  "Of course you recognize me," he replied, voice smooth and politely distant, authorative.  Then, aware that he sounded somewhat cold and almost patronizing, he added, "I was at the funeral yesterday.  You must have seen me there."  

She stared at him, and her beautiful, haunted eyes widened at the detached tone and expression in spite of herself.  "No," she protested in a hoarse whisper, still locked in her own world and obviously prey to the confusion that he had already mastered.  "I knew you _then_.  I must have known you then.  How else could you do this to me, make me remember what I'd tried so hard to forget?"

His own eyes widened at the dreadful intensity of her voice, and he did not miss the strangeness of her words.  He frowned, strangely unsettled and wondering if he would ever know what she meant.  "Then?" he repeated, ignoring the rest, giving her the chance to see his own lack of understanding at her emphasis of this small word and trying, at the same time, not to be frustrated when she remained as oblivious as ever to the query in his eyes.  "Have we met before?"

_Had_ he met this girl before?  This would, at least, explain the sense of familiarity he'd experienced when he'd first seen her.  Still, he knew he could never have forgotten a face like hers—hadn't he once thought he could recognize her anywhere, in any crowd?  Ah, but Serena would not have been the same girl in this mysterious 'then' that she was now, and he might, after all, _not_ have recognized her.  For all he knew, she might have looked completely different than she did today; grief, at least a grief of the magnitude he suspected she was enduring, had a way of changing even an individual's physical appearance, and Darien recalled the way he'd struggled to reconcile the pale girl from the funeral with the laughing child in the old family photographs.  Perhaps, he mused, he'd encountered her before the death of her friends, before her suffering had left that haunted expression in her eyes, before her pain had stripped her of the joy he'd seen in her in those pictures.  

Death had certainly changed the girl, and Darien was not truly surprised at this.  She was only fourteen years old, but she had witnessed far too much, and her eyes did not belong to a teenager.  Darien had not even truly spoken with her, but he already knew she held a calm far beyond her years.  The kind of maturity that now lay in her eyes could not have come before the murders of her friends, and Darien found himself wondering what she had been like, before this tragedy.  Had she been as full of joy as those pictures proclaimed?  He would, he mused almost wistfully, have liked to have known her then, but he wanted to know her as she was now even more.  Would she give him the chance? 

He turned his eyes back to the girl's, and his struggle to explain away his own emotions was hindered by the sudden realization that the girl was no longer as agitated as she had been.  She was no longer shaking, and her eyes were not as wide.  An almost unnatural calm had come over her, and, while he did not know what had been affecting her this way, she had obviously recovered, her control a rival for his own.  She had lost her fear of _him_, so much was certain.  The confusion was gone from her gaze, having been replaced by a clarity that was all the more unnerving.  She shrugged, and some of the color returned to her pale face as she turned away.  "Never mind," she replied, and her voice was curiously gentle and evasive, as beautiful as he had known it would be.  "It doesn't matter.  It might someday, but not yet."

Darien's eyes narrowed, but he only nodded again.  This was not, he knew, the time to push her, and he was intelligent enough to realize that she could not be forced to share her thoughts.  She had to do that on her own, or his attempts to heal her mind and heart would be completely futile.

This was not going as well as he had hoped.

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Serena felt the color returning to her cheeks, felt the blood beginning to flow once more in her veins.  She almost closed her eyes in a silent prayer of gratitude towards that other in her, towards that part of herself that had managed to regain control even as the wave of memory and recognition had assailed her.

Serena's heart had finally begun to beat again, and she could almost breathe without difficulty.  This was, she decided, going relatively well.  She had not yet truly had to lie, and the man was nearly as cold and impersonal as she had initially wanted him to be.  Still, she could not help berating herself for the mistakes she had already begun to make.  She knew she'd aroused his curiosity with her unthinking words and her unthinking reactions to him, and she rather viciously cursed herself for her own stupidity.  Had she truly said what she had?  This man was already searching for connections, and she had all but pointed them out!  If he really was one of her kind, he would not be long in discovering who she was—and who _he_ was, for that matter.  

She already knew he was far too intelligent, and she could not afford to slip up again.  Whatever he was, she needed to keep her secrets far better than this.  If she did not, she would only lead him to the very answers she sought to hide from herself.  Mina, she thought, would have been disappointed in her, had her guardian lived to see this.

The man was still watching her, and his eyes had not lost any of their intensity.  Serena almost shuddered under that formidable gaze, and that other strained to keep from reacting to his gaze.  Did he guess just how many secrets she had?  She knew she couldn't deter him from pursuing a greater explanation for her comments, and she wished she'd had the emotional strength left to protest this visit.  Her mother, in her worry, might not have insisted, had Serena truly objected.  

She shook her head, moving away from the man and taking her customary seat in the window.  She could feel his eyes on her, but she fought to keep her expression and her body perfectly stiff and controlled, as controlled and blank as Mina's had always been when trying to avoid giving answers she could not truly offer.  She settled herself into her cushions, watching with faint, wilted bemusement as the man resettled himself in her tiny wicker chair.  Her eyes did not, of course, miss his grimace as the wicker sagged under his wait, but she pretended not to see.

She stared at him for a long moment, trying desperately to remember what role this man had played in that other life.  Had he been like her, one of her mother's people and belonging to her mother's court, or was he some minor noble she'd never truly met?  His appearance, she thought, was certainly aristocratic enough, but did that mean anything at all?  "I never caught your name," she murmured, hoping for a clue to his past, and her own voice was as cold as his had been.

The man nodded, shrugged—clearly frustrated by his inability to communicate with her on even the most basic of levels.  "Darien Chiba," he muttered, and she wondered why he seemed so ill at ease with his own name.  Was he hiding something from her, or did he simply realize that this human identity could not possibly be his?

Darien Chiba…

Endymion… 


	6. Mysteries

A.N.:  Well, here's the next chapter.  I apologize for the long wait, but it couldn't be helped.  Reader responses are at the bottom, but don't forget to review!

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RECAP: Last time, Darien and Serena finally met face to face.  Serena started having a few flashbacks to her old life, and she finally realized that she must have known Darien during the Silver Millennium.  She still doesn't know who he is, though, and she's trying her best not to give him any clues as to their identities.  

Next:  Darien continues trying to solve the mystery that is Serena…

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CHAPTER FIVE

Serena wasn't talking.  Darien hadn't gotten a single answer from her—she ignored his every question, no matter how inane and purposeless that question might be.  Even when she did speak, her answers were so vague that she might as well not have responded at all.  He couldn't get her to talk to him, tell him what had happened to her or what emotions she was experiencing.  Darien leaned back in his too-small wicker chair, regarding the girl with heavy-lidded eyes.  She was still gazing out her window, and she would not even respond to his attempts at light conversation.  She seemed, in fact, determined to be as listless and vague as possible, and, if so, she was certainly succeeding.  Would she ever look at him again?  The view outside her window, he thought, couldn't possibly be that fascinating—especially since she'd been gazing at it for the past two hours.

Two very long, very _silent_ hours…   

He sighed, rolling his eyes as, with perfect ease, she avoided answering yet another of his questions.  She was, he thought, almost making a game out of this, out of avoiding his every attempt to get her to speak.  Had he not already realized, even after so short a time and with only a few dozen words between them, that she was not the sort to do this intentionally, he would almost have thought she was toying with him.  Frustration turned his eyes to chips of ice, and he struggled to maintain the composure necessary for the professional that he was.  She was, he told himself, not being purposely evasive, and he should not allow himself to lose his faith in her.  In any case, he couldn't end this session until he'd established some sort of connection between them, and he couldn't do even that if she thought he was losing patience with her or that he was only here to learn the truth behind the deaths of her friends.  Serena had to believe he trusted her judgment, had to believe he was genuinely concerned for her.  If she didn't, he knew he would never be able to heal her.

He leaned forward in his chair, ignoring the protests of the wicker beneath him and finally allowing the remoteness to drop from his eyes.  He gazed at her, and his face now held nothing but the honest concern he'd felt from the moment he'd first laid eyes on her.  The time for pretense, he knew, was finally over—he could only help himself by letting her see how much he cared about her…and for her.  "Serena," he began gently, noting the way her hands clenched whenever he murmured her name but unable to keep the word from his tongue, "I'm only trying to help you.  Why won't you talk to me?"

Her eyes flicked briefly towards him at this, then away.  He'd thought he'd seen some sort of emotion flaring in her eyes, but she'd turned her gaze too quickly, and he could not be sure that he hadn't been imagining it.  Still, a flare of hope raged within his heart.  Was he finally reaching her?  This was, he thought, the first time she'd actually responded to him since the session officially started, the first time she'd even looked at him, and he took some small comfort in the fact that she'd finally decided to stop ignoring him completely.  

His hope was destroyed as quickly as had the joy she'd once possessed, when next she spoke.  "What would you have me say?" she demanded softly, voice completely monotone and lifeless but still not that of the child she was supposed to be.  "Did you want to know how they died, what pain they endured before their hearts and their bodies broke?  Would you truly be happier if you knew how they were tortured and beaten, how they were slaughtered?"  She shook her head.  "I can't tell you what happened that day, and that's all you really want from me.  Why not just give up?"

Darien's eyes widened imperceptibly.  _I'll never give up on you_, he thought, surprising himself with his own intensity.  His heart shuddered at the mere thought of walking away from her, but aloud he only murmured, "I won't lie to you, Serena.  I _am _here for answers, but I'm not going to push you for details of that night.  I'm only here to help you, if I can, and I won't ask for anything you're not ready to give.  I'm here for _you_, Serena.  Only for you."

Her hands clenched again, the knuckles white and bloodless.  "I…don't think I believe you," she told him slowly, and his heart sank at the acerbic hopelessness now in her voice.  "I've heard what they're saying about me on the news," she snapped quietly, suddenly.  "I know of the lies they're telling of me, of my involvement in this.  How, then, can I believe you were sent here for any other reason than to get me to confess?"  

Darien leaned forward, and his wintry eyes glinted with a sincerity even Serena could not doubt.  "I'm here," he said, emphasizing every word, "_for_ _you_.  I will never repeat a word of what you tell me, unless you order me to do so.  If nothing else, I promise you this, Serena.  Your secrets are safe with me."

Did she believe him?  Her crystalline eyes were still so empty, and he could not read her.  She did not, at least, look away again, and her lips were twisted in something that was not quite a smile.  "If only I could believe you, Darien Chiba," she murmured gently, the anger gone from her face.  She sighed, and the escaping air seemed to carry with it all the sorrow of her loss.  

Darien's heart turned to lead in response.  

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By the time Serena's first session ended, Irene Tsukino had reorganized and cleaned every square inch of her home.  Her worry for her daughter's welfare had instilled a terrible, unavoidably nervous energy in her, and, had her very life depended on her ability to calm herself, she could not have held still.  Darien found her at the kitchen table, and even this wearied young man stopped to stare blankly at the woman rabidly polishing silver long since made spotless.  He simply shrugged, however, having greater concerns than this on his mind and perfectly able to understand the woman's fears.  He, too, cared for Serena, even if he couldn't understand _why _he did, and he knew why the girl's mother was so frantic.  He sighed, moving towards her and sliding into the chair closest to her own.  When she still didn't notice his presence, he reached out with one slender, strong hand, gently covering her fingers with his, stopping her movements before she could give herself blisters.  

She glanced up at this, surprised to see this oddly handsome youth staring at her with such compassion in those intense eyes of his.  Why, she wondered absently, was he down here, with her?  Shouldn't he be with Serena, healing her daughter as he'd been trained to do?  She looked down at the hand covering hers, staring at his fingers as her heart constricted painfully.  "How is she?"

The question seemed to catch the youth off guard, for the fingers wrapped around her own jerked slightly.  His hand remained over hers, however, and Irene finally permitted herself to look up and meet the boy's gaze.  His eyes, she noted immediately, were shuttered, his expression closed to her.  Irene had always prided herself on her ability to read the thoughts and emotions of others, but even she could not understand the look in this stranger's eyes.  He only frowned, shrugged, made no attempt to pull his hand away.  Silence stretched between them, and Irene almost began to wonder if he had even heard her question.  Then, just as she was about to repeat herself, the boy sighed.  "She wouldn't talk to me," he confessed, hesitating only a little.  "She doesn't trust me enough, I think, and she wouldn't let me help her."

Irene nodded.  She had, of course, expected as much, though she'd also hoped her daughter would have enough sense to share her pain with this man.  "She wouldn't tell you anything at all?" she asked finally, and she could not keep the disappointment from her voice.  

The youth shook his handsome head.  "Nothing that makes any sense to me," he admitted softly.  "I don't think she's ready to speak of that night.  Not yet, anyway."  His frown deepened, and he shrugged again.  "I'm not giving up hope, Mrs. Tsukino," he told her evenly, "and you shouldn't, either.  Trauma like this will take years to get over, and Serena may never be willing to tell us of what happened.  We can only stay with her, support her, let her know she's not alone.  She might yet open up to us.  I hope she does, for her own sake, but we can't let her see how frustrated we become when it doesn't happen as quickly as we'd like or even at all.  It's important that she doesn't feel any pressure right now." 

Irene nodded, pulling her hand from his and standing abruptly.  She pushed her slender body from the chair she'd been using, moving slowly to stand by the nearest window.  "I'm willing to wait," she said, "but I don't know if Serena can.  She wakes herself every night with her own screams, and I know she's reliving everything that happened to her and to her friends.  Can anyone withstand something like that, and still have anything left of herself?"  Serena's mother frowned, and her eyes became bitter.  "She's afraid of the dark now, did you know that?  She didn't use to be, but everything changed, after that night."

Darien leaned back in his chair, and his expression had become thoughtful.  "Does she talk in her sleep?" he asked suddenly, earning a startled glance from the girl's mother.  

Irene considered.  "Yes," she replied, and her own expression was just as thoughtful.  "She always has, even before...well, _before._  I can't understand what she's saying, but she does talk.  Why?  Can that help us, when her voice is usually so low that we can't hear what she's saying?"

Darien's eyes had narrowed.  "If we record what she says," he muttered, speaking to himself, "then we can always take the tape to a specialist.  There are people capable of manipulating a recording until we can understand the words on it."

Irene looked doubtful.  "Wouldn't that make her feel like we're betraying her trust?" she asked uncertainly.  "Serena might close herself off even more, if she ever found out.  I want to know what's going through her head, but I don't think going behind her back is such a good idea."

Darien frowned, understanding where Irene was coming from but not quite willing to let the thought go.  "You're probably right," he answered quietly, "but I don't want you to dismiss the idea entirely.  There's a fairly high possibility that Serena will never trust me with her problems, and we might have to resort to this if we want to help her.  For her own sake, we have to consider it."  He sighed, rising to his feet with his usual grace, his features a little tight with strain.  "I can't do anything more today, at any rate," he told Irene.  "I'd hoped to get a little further with Serena than I did, but maybe she'll talk more tomorrow."  She nodded, but Darien wasn't finished.  "I'd also like to speak with _you _again," he said.  "I'll have a better chance of understanding Serena if I know more about her, and you're one of the best sources of information that I have.  Can you come down to my office sometime tomorrow morning and talk to me?  I won't keep you long."  

He thought he could see a little reluctance in her eyes, as though this was something she didn't want to do at all.  "Of course," she murmured anyway.  "I'll do anything I can to help."

He smiled gently at her, though he was also filing away his observation until he could make sense of it.  "Thank you," he said, wondering if Irene Tsukino knew more than she'd been letting on.  Just how many secrets did the women in this family have?  

Serena remained at her window, trapped in her own memories until long after Darien had left.  She stared out into nothing, not even aware enough to be grateful that her bedroom faced the backyard rather than the front where all the reporters had been gathered for the past few days.  She didn't care that the rain had stopped or that she'd gotten through her first session with the psychologist without revealing too much.  She didn't care about anything anymore, and if she hadn't been reliving the deaths of her senshi yet again, she probably would have been thinking that she would never care about anything ever again.

Serena sighed, trying in vain to pull her mind away from her memories of that hellish night when her protectors had been taken from her.  She was tired to the point of exhaustion, but she knew that she couldn't risk sleep, not now.  As bad as the memories were during the day, they would only become a thousand times worse if she actually let her eyes close for more than a second or two.  She would smell the blood, if she slept, would hear the screams echoing through her mind even more than they already were.  She would see the determination in their faces as they'd sacrificed themselves to save her, as they'd died so that something greater than all of them would live...and she didn't know how much more of that she could take.  She felt as though the pain and the memories were slowly stripping away what little was left of her soul, and she certainly would have agreed with what her mother had said to Darien Chiba, had she been able to hear their conversation.  Even Serena sometimes wondered if, just perhaps, her pain was quite literally making her crazy.

**_You're not crazy, Serena.  You're just tired, and hurting.  You won't always feel this way._**

Serena moaned, burying her head in her hands.  "Please," she whispered, despair and tears welling in her voice.  "_I can't take anymore_…"

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The day was still relatively young, by the time Darien finished his first session with Serena Tsukino, but while there'd been more than enough time for him to get back to his office, he didn't even try.  He headed for his apartment instead, feeling a little more drained than he would have expected.  What was it about that girl that had taken so much out of him?  Talking to her—or _at_ her, since she hadn't really responded to him—had been physically exhausting, and it should not have been, not under any circumstances.  As new as Darien was at this, he knew his reaction wasn't in the least bit normal.  Where was the detachment he'd been trained to feel and show?  He was responding to Serena's plight as though he'd known her for her entire life, as though she was the most important person in his world rather than just a stranger he'd known for only a few hours.  She was getting to him, and he couldn't understand how or why.  

Darien sighed as he entered his apartment, tossing his keys onto the table and slipping out of his light jacket.  He moved slowly into his kitchen, pouring himself a glass of tap water and then drifting into the spare bedroom he was now using as an office.  The room was both as small and undecorated as the rest of his apartment, bare to the point of sterility.  The walls in this place were entirely blank, without even the small splash of color that would have been there had he ever bothered to put up wallpaper or pictures.  A plain, rather cheap desk was pressed against the far wall, a bookshelf crammed against another.  Both shelves and desk were almost fanatically neat, nothing out of place.  A single manila folder was lying at the center of the desk, and Darien sighed again, walking over and picking it up.  He let the cover slide open, his frown increasing as a picture of Serena laughed back at him, the warmth in her eyes cutting a hole in his heart.  Would she ever be this happy again?

He pushed the picture to the side, slipping into a nearby chair as he began rifling through the contents of the folder.  Nothing in this file was new to him, of course, though his boss had only given it to him a day before the funerals.  He'd gone over what little information he had so many times that he now more or less had every known detail of Serena's life memorized.  Still, he couldn't help frowning as he looked everything over once more, unable to shake the feeling that he was missing something vital.  There were too many gaps in his knowledge of the girl, too many discrepancies in what he did know.  Why, for instance, would one tiny schoolgirl have sustained so many injuries in a single year?  Both the family doctor and the school nurse had noticed and documented literally hundreds of odd bruises or scrapes on Serena's skin in the last few months, though the hurts had eventually been dismissed a natural result of Serena's well known clumsiness.  Nothing had been done about them, though Darien suspected that there was much more to it than anyone else was willing to admit.  If these injuries, after all, were simply caused by Serena tripping over her own feet all the time, why was it that nobody had said anything before?  Her hurts had only become frequent enough to be noticeable within the last eleven months or so, and Darien knew there had to be a better explanation than mere clumsiness.

Darien continued to frown, thinking, as always, that everything about Serena seemed to have changed in the last year.  Her school records told him that she'd always been an indifferent student at best, but lately her grades had dropped, even for her.  She was failing or close to failing in every class, and even her attendance had  become more erratic.  She'd started missing more school, in the last few months, coming late or leaving early several times a week.  She'd always had permission, of course, and she'd always had a legitimate excuse, but Darien wondered how everyone else could possibly have missed this.  Serena's teachers had noted that she was falling asleep in class more often, and yet they hadn't thought anything of it.  If they had, he wondered tiredly, would this tragedy have been avoided?

Darien grimaced, tossing the file onto his desk and leaning back in his chair.  He closed his eyes, still mulling over the oddities surrounding the pale girl he had become so fixated on.  Having gone over Serena's file so often, he still couldn't explain the patterns he'd noticed.  Skipping school, falling asleep at all hours…something was obviously not right in Serena's world, and Darien intended to find out exactly what it was.    

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**READER RESPONSES:**

**Koosei:  **Well, I don't know if Serena is going to "warm up to him" right away.  There won't be any of the open antagonism that characterized their early relationship in the anime, but she's obviously not going to trust him right away, either.  Even I don't know exactly what's going to happen between them, though.  As for your question about the other senshi…well, I guess they're already starting to "pop up."  Serena's going to be hearing a lot of voices in the future!  

Thanks for reading.  I appreciate your comments and your compliments, and I hope you continue to enjoy this story.

**Sassy_Chan:  **Once again, Sassy, I'm overjoyed that you bothered to read this.  You're an incredible friend, and I appreciate all the support you give me.  With praise like that, I'll certainly never suffer from low self-esteem!  

And, yes, I'm also glad that Serena and Darien finally got to meet.  Let's just hope Darien isn't always going to be too stupid or too ignorant to pick up on the clues, ne?  

**RaLeCo:  **Deep, huh?  You have no idea how much I appreciate the compliment…all of them, actually.  What you wrote was infinitely more inspiring than I can every say, and I'm overjoyed that you took the time to review.

**Lady of Pluto:  **Once again, thank you for the compliments.  You're fairly amazing yourself, and I always look forward to hearing from you.  

**Usako4life:  **Yeah, I don't know how I'm going to make this cheerful, either.  As much angst as I've got in the first few chapters, it's hard to believe that I never actually meant for this story to start out so depressing.  At the very least, though, I can promise a happy ending.

I really can't answer your question, about whether or not Serena's realized who Darien is.  She obviously has on some level, but she doesn't know exactly who he was or what he was to her.  She will eventually, though.  Thanks for reading!

**Roswellbfan:  **What do you mean, my idea to use the shout-outs was a good one?  It was _your _idea!  I always get such warm fuzzies when you respond to each of your reviewers personally that I absolutely had to do the same (though not for RM.  Can you imagine how long that would take?  I'll do that for the sequel, though).  And OF COURSE I would include you!  You are, bar none, my favorite reviewer/writer on the planet.  I'd be an unmitigated git if I hadn't included you, because most of my inspiration and motivation to write comes from something you've written or said to me.  I owe you more than you could ever know.  

"Nothing short of breathless", huh?  Thank you!  That certainly is a compliment, especially since it's coming from you!  You're pretty darn talented yourself, you know.  Small wonder that I look forward to your reviews!  Actually, I just stuck that bit with Lita in because I was trying to lighten up the mood a little.  I don't want this story to be completely depressing, and I'm trying to ease up on the angst.  

Again, thank you.  Your talent and insight shines through even in your commentary, and I just adore you.

**Ocianne:  **Well, I'm glad you're liking this fic, even though most people would hate me for killing off the senshi.  Of course, I stick by my promise that they aren't going to _stay _dead.  Thanks for the compliments!  

**Fan:  **Once again, my thanks to you, whoever you are, for reviewing so many chapters on the same day.  That must have taken forever, so I really appreciate the dedication.  You're amazing!


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